UNHRC resolution blown out of proportion: Cover for impending Sinhala New Year price hikes – Ranil

The government was creating a big rumpus about the US resolution calling for the implementation of the LLRC recommendations, to distract the masses from the high cost of living and impending price hikes on essential goods and services during the forthcoming Sinhala and Tamil New Year, UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said yesterday.Addressing the first in a series of meetings organised by the “Opposition Protest Front” in Panadura, Wickremesinghe said that the US resolution to the ongoing UN Human Rights Council Meeting in Geneva, was based on a pledge given by the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime to the last UNHRC sessions, that the recommendations of its very own LLRC Report would be enforced.

Corruption and ego boosting exercises have resulted in the cost of living skyrocketing, he said adding that “the government is trying to make up for the huge losses of State institutions, by increasing oil and food prices, which are bound to increase further during the Sinhala and Tamil New Year.”

The Opposition Leader said that even the high interest loans that had been obtained from international banks, purportedly for development purposes, had been squandered on financing VVIPs’ foreign jaunts and extravagant lifestyles.

Those who protest against the high food and oil prices are attacked and shot dead, as what happened to the Chilaw fisherman Anthony Fernando, he said adding that nearly 150 tear gas canisters had been fired at the recent UNP protest held opposite the Fort Railway Station.

“Even 148,000 tear gas canisters and bullets cannot frighten us. We will demonstrate in every nook and corner of the country,” Wickremesinghe said while announcing that rallies would be held in the Northern province as well, with the first being scheduled to take place in Jaffna.

He said that the UPFA was preoccupied with protecting President Rajapaksa, while the joint opposition wanted to save the poor from being strangled to death by an insensitive and ungrateful government which had promised to end their sufferings once the war was over.